Often, Pleasant Rowland would put a message to parents on the back cover of a catalogue. Here is the back cover message from the Holiday 1995 catalogue:
It reads:
“A Message to Parents
I started Pleasant Company ten years ago with a singular mission-to provide girls with beautiful books, dolls, and pastimes that celebrate the experience of growing up as an American girl. It was my hope to prolong and protect those fleeting years of childhood when girls are old enough to read and still love to play.
The American Girls Collection® was created to give girls an understanding of their past and a sense of pride in the traditions they share with girls of yesterday. Over the past decade, we have received thousands of grateful letters telling of time shared between generations because of The American Girls Collection.
Other letters urged us to expand our vision from the past to the present to help girls address the challenges of growing up in the ’90s. Our response is an entirely new collection-The American Girl of Today. With bright books and a lively magazine, with dolls that reflect the unique beauty of every girl, with great gear for school and play, we link past to present and empower girls to take pride in this, their moment in history.
We firmly believe that the girls we inspire today will become the women who make the difference tomorrow. It has always been so.
Pleasant T. Rowland
Ms. Rowland, the creator of The American Girls Collection and the president of Pleasant Company, is a noted educator and author of children’s reading and language arts materials used in schools throughout the nation.”
Holiday 1995 is when the modern line, American Girl of Today was released. Pleasant Company was even looking for outfit and accessory ideas for the line and you could send your ideas to them.
Did you ever send in outfit or accessory ideas to Pleasant Company or American Girl? I once sent some drawings of my ideas to AG in the mid-2000s, but they replied by sending my drawings back to me saying that they didn’t take outside suggestions as they had their own internal design department. I know that I suggested a track suit and a drum set and I should still have the letters from American Girl at my parents’ house.